Poem Analysis: Thanksgiving Prayer By E. Cummings
Thanksgiving Prayer
Edward Estlin Cummings, more commonly known as E.E. Cummings, was an American and one of the most popular poets of the 20th Century. However, he was not only a poet; he was a playwright, painter, essayist, and an author. Nevertheless, he was more renowned for his romantic themed poetry, which dealt with the themes of love and nature. As a poet, E.E. Cummings liked to go against the norm and play with syntax and sentence structure. Conversely, this made it hard for some readers to understand his work because many of his poems did not act in agreement with the conventional combinatorial rules that produce typical English. In, E.E. Cummings poem “I thank you God for most this amazing (65) MC,” he uses Christianity symbolism, …show more content…
Cummings uses sentence structure and word choice to implant the image of a man in prayer into the readers mind. In line one, E.E. Cummings uses word inversion to dictate to the reader that the speaker is still in a groggy state of mind at the beginning of his prayer. He says, “I thank You God for most this amazing day,” meaning the speaker is thankful for God allowing him to have woken up to this amazing day. If E.E. Cummings were to have used proper English and make the speaker say “he was thankful for an amazing day,” or something among those lines, than it would not give the connotation that the speaker has just woken up and is still speaking in mumble jumble. At the end of the first stanza, the speaker refers to the natural and the infinite as the “yes,” and in the third stanza the speaker refers to being “lifted from the no of all nothing.” He says this with the connotation that the yes represents everything good; the human world, tasting, seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. In contrast, the no represents the negativity, being lost in the universe and death. E.E. Cummings brilliance was displayed throughout this poem. He used word inversion, Christianity symbolism, poem structure and a virtuoso choice of words to depict a man deep in a thanksgiving prayer. He easily paints a picture of a man, early in the morning, thanking God for allowing him to wake to a new morning because it’s a blessing to be alive, it’s a blessing to taste, touch, hear,
Edward Estlin Cummings, more commonly known as E.E. Cummings, was an American and one of the most popular poets of the 20th Century. However, he was not only a poet; he was a playwright, painter, essayist, and an author. Nevertheless, he was more renowned for his romantic themed poetry, which dealt with the themes of love and nature. As a poet, E.E. Cummings liked to go against the norm and play with syntax and sentence structure. Conversely, this made it hard for some readers to understand his work because many of his poems did not act in agreement with the conventional combinatorial rules that produce typical English. In, E.E. Cummings poem “I thank you God for most this amazing (65) MC,” he uses Christianity symbolism, …show more content…
Cummings uses sentence structure and word choice to implant the image of a man in prayer into the readers mind. In line one, E.E. Cummings uses word inversion to dictate to the reader that the speaker is still in a groggy state of mind at the beginning of his prayer. He says, “I thank You God for most this amazing day,” meaning the speaker is thankful for God allowing him to have woken up to this amazing day. If E.E. Cummings were to have used proper English and make the speaker say “he was thankful for an amazing day,” or something among those lines, than it would not give the connotation that the speaker has just woken up and is still speaking in mumble jumble. At the end of the first stanza, the speaker refers to the natural and the infinite as the “yes,” and in the third stanza the speaker refers to being “lifted from the no of all nothing.” He says this with the connotation that the yes represents everything good; the human world, tasting, seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. In contrast, the no represents the negativity, being lost in the universe and death. E.E. Cummings brilliance was displayed throughout this poem. He used word inversion, Christianity symbolism, poem structure and a virtuoso choice of words to depict a man deep in a thanksgiving prayer. He easily paints a picture of a man, early in the morning, thanking God for allowing him to wake to a new morning because it’s a blessing to be alive, it’s a blessing to taste, touch, hear,